Zena Assi’s latest series of paintings, Put It In A Tin, and My City Wall are inspired by her personal experience of moving to a new place, and the plight of immigrants who are being forced to move due to the political and economic situations in their countries. Her mixed media works speak about the emotional, social and cultural baggage we all carry with us when we move from one place to another. They deal with the struggle of questioning your own culture when faced with a new one, of tackling issues of identity when we are rewriting our own stories based on tainted memories, and the cross-cultural conflicts caused by migration.
“After decades of living in Beirut, when I moved to London three years ago, I found that adapting to the change was much more difficult than I had expected. I had to deal with so many conflicting feelings. I wanted to retain my identity and culture, but I also wanted to cut the strings that kept me tied to it, and to have an open mind so that I could adapt to my new environment, and learn new things. As a mother, I felt it was important for my children to not lose their connection with Lebanon, but I was also aware of the way I tended to embellish the stories I told them about our country, thus controlling the image they would have of it. As an artist I wanted to think afresh, and absorb new ideas, but I also wanted my work to be in touch with my roots,” the Lebanese artist says.
Above: "Late Late Late." (ZenaAssi.com)
She has expressed these mixed emotions and experiences through the dualities in her series, Put It In A Tin. Each painting in this series features a big, colourful bouquet of flowers planted in a coffee, tea, ketchup or soup tin. But a closer look reveals that hidden among the flowers are a variety of other forms such as soldiers, emojis, birds, animals, words and numbers that reflect what is happening in our world today, and in the artist’s own life.
“My mother and grandmother would grow plants in food tins, because the metal from the tin leaches into the soil and makes the plant stronger. Putting my flowers in tins symbolises my desire to remain connected with my culture and identity, and the strength I derive from it. The people, bicycles, dogs, emojis, soldiers and other images hidden among the flowers reflect the visuals I encounter in my daily life in London, and my memories of Beirut. These paintings are not about conveying a message; they are just about depicting what is happening around me,” Assi says.
Above: "My City Nested Over a Machine." (ZenaAssi.com)
The process by which the artist has created these paintings is interesting. She spread out her canvases on the floor of her studio, leaving them there for months. As time passed, the blank canvasses got covered with dust, footprints, coffee stains, paint from her brushes, her doodles and scribbled notes, stenciled figures and motifs, and various other traces of daily life as it unfolded around them. She then took control of the process, by stretching the canvasses on a frame, looking for forms that appeared through the layers, like shadowy memories of the past, and outlining and highlighting them with ink or paint to create her bouquets of daily life, growing in food tins.
